For media inquiries, contact Sommer Yesenofski, Senior Communications Manager at Environmental Defense Fund (syesenofski@edf.org), Liz Georges, Senior Director of Climate Communications at World Wildlife Fund (liz.georges@wwfus.org), or Mandy Schossig, Head of Public Relations and Communications at Oeko-Institut (m.schossig@oeko.de).
31 January, 2023 — The Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) launched an expanded version of its interactive scoring tool to assess the quality of several newly added types of carbon credits. The new CCQI scores reveal that the majority of carbon credit types assessed are low in quality in one or more criteria, and underscore the need to improve the quality of carbon credits in the market.
Led by Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US), and Oeko-Institut, CCQI offers free resources, including its robust assessment methodology and interactive scoring tool, to support carbon market stakeholders in understanding which carbon credits are more likely to deliver actual emission reductions as well as social and environmental benefits. With these new scores, CCQI’s scoring tool now covers over a quarter of the voluntary carbon market.
“CCQI sets a high bar for quality—and our scores show that all carbon credit types that we've assessed have notable concerns in some quality aspects, whether that pertains to additionality, the robustness of emission reduction calculations, or other aspects of carbon credit quality,” said Pedro Martins Barata, Associate Vice President for Carbon Markets at Environmental Defense Fund. “This should be a signal to carbon market stakeholders and buyers who want to see their investments return positive impacts to do their due diligence, and to carbon crediting programs to up their game.”
The new set of scores released by CCQI assesses the quality of the following credit types:
Household biodigesters
Industrial biodigesters fed with livestock manure
Leak repair in natural gas transmission and distribution systems
Recovery of associated gas from oil fields
Solar photovoltaic power
Wind power (onshore)
CCQI scores a given carbon credit type on an interval scale of one through five against several quality objectives, such as robust determination of the emissions impact or environmental and social safeguards. This allows buyers to understand the nuances and trade-offs in the quality of carbon credit types, make an informed decision, and focus their due diligence where it's likely to be needed most.
The expanded CCQI scorings show that carbon credit types often perform well in some areas, but poorly in others. Many carbon credit types face serious shortcomings in their methodology of quantifying emission reductions, for example, with a high risk of overestimating reductions.
“There are serious problems with how some methodologies estimate emissions reductions. This is not good news at a time when demand for carbon credits is increasing,” said Lambert Schneider, Research Coordinator for International Climate Policy at Oeko-Institut. "The good news is that we also found good practice and innovative approaches. The quality of carbon credits could be improved quite a bit if all carbon crediting programs would adopt the most robust approaches from their peers. For carbon credits to play a meaningful role in financing climate action, the rules of carbon crediting programs need to become more robust."
The new scores also reveal that:
Most methodologies assessed either overestimate emissions reductions, or there is large uncertainty. This is an issue that affects project types regardless of their performance in other areas. For example, project types that deploy efficient cookstoves in rural areas generally had favorable additionality assessments, but risk significantly overestimating emissions reductions. Changes to these methodological approaches would significantly reduce this risk and uncertainty.
Renewable energy projects – specifically solar PV and onshore wind – score poorly on additionality, meaning that these project types are likely to be profitable without the added incentive of revenues from carbon credits. By contrast, in the case of industrial biodigesters or landfill gas utilization projects, carbon credit revenues often make a true difference, enabling these project types to become economically viable.
Across programs and project types, credits that are paired with a complementary standard – like Verra's Climate, Community & Biodiversity (CCB) Standards and Sustainable Development Verified Impact Standard (SD VISta) – score higher on environmental and social safeguards.
Insights derived from these and future assessments under CCQI are aimed to help crediting programs improve on delivering the climate benefits they promise and to assist buyers with understanding and managing risks associated with their investments and claims.
CCQI will expand its scoring tool to assess more project types and programs, allowing users to discover how other project types and programs perform on quality. CCQI aims to cover over 80 percent of the current voluntary carbon market by the end of 2023.
For more information, visit www.carboncreditquality.org.
CCQI is mentioned in Reuters coverage of COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh Egypt, where we hosted an event on carbon credit quality. Read the full article here.
CCQI experts Brad Schallert, Pedro Martins Barata and Lambert Schneider are quoted in a Carbon Pulse article showcasing our new carbon credit quality scoring tool!
As the article highlights, "The initiative aims to help carbon credit buyers make more informed decisions – something they hope will drive an improvement in the quality of credits transacted in the voluntary carbon market... [CCQI] is set apart from other similar initiatives because of its financial independence and unlikelihood of any conflict-of-interests making its way into the ratings."
Check out the full article here: https://carbon-pulse.com/161150/
Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) released transparent scorings for three carbon credit types to help enhance the quality of credits being transacted in the market
31 May, 2022 — The Carbon Credit Quality Initiative (CCQI) launched a new interactive tool to score the quality of several types of carbon credits. The free online CCQI Scoring Tool enables buyers in the growing carbon credit market to make more informed decisions and ultimately aims to improve the quality of credits transacting in the market.
Led by Environmental Defense Fund, World Wildlife Fund (WWF-US), and Oeko-Institut, CCQI offers free resources, including its robust assessment methodology and interactive scoring tool, to support carbon credit buyers who seek the highest possible quality as well as to build broader public understanding of which credits deliver the greatest climate mitigation impact. The tool is now available at www.carboncreditquality.org.
The first set of scores released by CCQI assesses the quality of three carbon credit project types (landfill gas utilization, establishment of natural forests and efficient cookstoves) under four carbon crediting programs (the Clean Development Mechanism, Climate Action Reserve, Gold Standard and the Verified Carbon Standard operated by Verra).
The first round of CCQI scorings show that carbon credits often perform well in some areas but poorly in others. Efficient cookstove projects, for example, face serious shortcomings in quantifying emission reductions and addressing non-permanence but often generate high environmental and social benefits.
"CCQIs first round of scoring confirmed that there is both wheat and chaff in the carbon credit market. The important thing, however, is that the consumer can tell the difference," said Pedro Martins Barata, Senior Director of Climate at Environmental Defense Fund. "Free, transparent resources like our Scoring Tool can move the market toward quality by helping users understand what quality means for carbon credits." Carbon credits are in high demand from buyers aiming to meet their voluntary climate commitments and compliance obligations under emissions trading schemes and carbon tax policies.
"When buyers come to the carbon credit market, they are sometimes surprised that detailed guidance on how to evaluate credits is not publicly available," said Brad Schallert, WWF's director of carbon market governance and aviation. "CCQI hopes to fill this information gap by offering our scoring tool as one of several steps a buyer takes when conducting due diligence on how credits might differ in quality."
Carbon credits are assessed using CCQIs methodology, which scores a given carbon credit on an interval scale of one through five against several quality objectives, listed below. This allows buyers to understand the nuances and trade-offs in the quality of carbon credits and make an informed decision.
For instance, the CCQI scores reveal considerable differences between carbon crediting programs. For example, the Clean Development Mechanism was found to have the best third-party auditing rules, the Climate Action Reserve performed best in its approach for compensating for potential non-permanence, the Gold Standard was found to have the most comprehensive environmental and social safeguards, and the Verified Carbon Standard performed high in its governance, transparency and its approaches for reducing non-permanence risks.
"What makes a high-quality carbon credit is a complex question," said Lambert Schneider, Research Coordinator for International Climate Policy at Oeko-Institut. "We designed our Scoring Tool so that users could have a nuanced 360-degree view of different quality features of carbon credits. The scorings show a mixed performance of carbon crediting programs. If all carbon crediting programs would adopt the best practice approaches from their peers, however, this would be an important step forward in addressing the quality problems currently faced in the market."
CCQIs quality objectives include:
CCQI will expand its Scoring Tool to assess more project types and programs, allowing users to discover how other project types and programs perform on quality and cover a larger share of the current market. The next round of scores will be released later by the end of 2022.
In the race toward quality, CCQI is here to help keep companies, carbon credit developers, and all market participants racing in the right direction.
A recent GreenBiz Group article featuring CCQI affirms, "Offset integrity must become the top priority for companies to ethically leverage the convenience of the voluntary carbon market." Read the full article here
Learn how CCQI aims to move the carbon market toward quality, how users can explore our tool to assess carbon credit types, and what's next for CCQI.
To read the full article, visit: https://lnkd.in/egnbSetG